Explanation: Comet Hale-Bopp
continues its slow trek across the night sky, and can now be seen
superposed near the bright globular clusterM14.
Will Comet Hale-Bopp
become as bright in early 1997 as Comet Hyakutake
did in early 1996? It is still too early to tell. Currently
Hale-Bopp
is curiously holding at about 5thmagnitude
- just barely bright enough to see
without binoculars from a dark location. Because of the size
of coma, some speculate
that the nucleus of Hale-Bopp
is unusually large. The actual nucleus is obscured, however,
and recent speculation
includes that the nucleus is comparable in size to Comet Halley
- about 10-15 km across.